


The Four Stages of Grief

by Endless_musings



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adult Themes, Angst, Depression, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Infertility, Miscarriage, Themes of Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:53:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26487475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endless_musings/pseuds/Endless_musings
Summary: Hermione’s feet stretched under fine grains of sand, toes burrowed beneath progress made by rolling tides that broke down rock and glass and coral and bone to create berth against her soles. Something to buoy her against the sinking. When was it proper to stop feeling so impossibly sad?Hermione's reflection of her journey through loss, love, and grief.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 13
Kudos: 76





	The Four Stages of Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome friends! 
> 
> Before you read this work, please be mindful of the tags. Trigger Warning: this story deals with topics of miscarriage, infertility, loss, and grief. If you feel you are not in a safe mental space to read, please be kind to yourself. 
> 
> I have been working on this short fic for well over five months and debated for a long time about whether I should share it at all. This story started out as a personal exercise while dealing with my own grief after a miscarriage. Miscarriage, especially those that happen in the midst of a pandemic, are often not spoken of, and I find the stigmas in discussing them to be heartbreaking. I myself felt alone during my journey, and after finally reaching out to others, I know that feeling is shared amongst many. 
> 
> I leaned upon these characters as an outlet to share some of my personal story, and to hopefully let others know that they are not alone in this. The many ways in which we deal with our grief are valid, and I hope that by sharing an experience that isn't often spoken about I can give others the courage to still love and be gentle with themselves. 
> 
> I have to send endless beta love to my friends Mightbewriting and Icepower55 for supporting me through this process, and for being amazing, compassionate souls. 
> 
> With that, I leave you to read!  
> Much love,  
> Endless_Musings

_**The Four Stages of Grief** _

It was a simple day, neither beautiful nor ugly: overcast clouds on the verge of watering the earth, and a roaring ocean that expanded far beyond her eye’s reach. 

Hermione’s feet stretched under fine grains of sand, toes burrowed beneath progress made by rolling tides that broke down rock and glass and coral and bone to create berth against her soles. Something to buoy her against the sinking. 

She wiped at a stray tear and wrapped her arms around her knees, dropping her head against bone with a shaking breath. Exhaled as the waves crashed. Inhaled as the tides sucked water back out into the abyss. 

When was it proper to stop feeling so impossibly sad? 

It’d been months already. Months of hearing well-meaning _it gets easiers_ , and _time heals everythings_. 

It wasn’t as though it had been planned; plenty of women had suffered worse than her, and for far longer. There had been barely any lead up to her pregnancy at all; no conversations between Draco and herself beyond whispers of hopes and dreams passed under satin sheets, a vague outline punctuated by _one days_ and _maybe whens_ —their honeymoon phase too fresh, too selfish to allow another in.

By the time she told Draco, her body had already begun showing signs of transformation, subtle and breathtaking, becoming another’s whole universe. His subsequent disbelief—“I’m going to be a father,” breathed at first with a frown, then repeated through a crooked smile; _I’m going to be a father._

The pregnancy shocked them, an estuary of freshwater meeting salt, river converging upon turbulent sea; the prospect to finally right the wrongs of their parents, to blend, to evolve, to start anew. 

A chance to create their own family. 

Even now, on this neither beautiful nor ugly day, she could still hear echoes of their early laughter and unfiltered joy, sailing across windswept shores. But the waves swallowed the sounds as quickly as she heard them. 

The sand shifted beside her. 

Draco burrowed his toes, searching for hers in their self-dug grave. 

She was still deciding whether she wanted to bury her heart in the sand too, far beneath the home her toes had carved, or if it was better to scatter its remains across crashing water, letting the angry tide pull it out to sea, drowning it. 

Draco wrapped his arm around her shoulder, fingers kneading the tight muscles, pressing his strength into her back. All the words he could possibly say had already been said: in the tears that matched hers in depth and viscosity, in the days spent immobile but restless, in the skipped meals and piled-up dishes. Words spoken through his tight embrace, strong enough to break down iron walls of self-imposed isolation. 

She reached for his hand.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” He asked, rubbing warmth into her cold fingers and staring into the furious tide. 

_Beautiful isn’t it?_

They learned of their loss the same day the first package arrived, carrying books and decorations for an astrological themed nursery.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” she’d said, unrolling a dark blue canvas scattered with constellations.

Draco tilted his head and laughed. “It’s...Hermione, what if we have a girl?”

“Girls can like space,” she’d responded, rolling her eyes and picturing a child with auburn curls and grey eyes gazing up at the stars. 

In her excitement to prepare— _Draco, we must be ready! Time is moving too fast_ —she ignored the advice of her mother; _wait until your next appointment_. _Wait to hear the heartbeat._

Logically, she knew these things happened. But not to her. Never had she suffered failure so crushing, so absolute. Not in school, where she excelled in every subject with perfect grades and perfect attendance: top of her class, showered with accolades. Not in work, where she boasted perfect performance reviews: an impressive record built on competency and excellence. Not even in her relationships; she was loved, and had love to give. 

In fact, the word _failure_ barely existed in her lexicon. 

That afternoon, crippling failure took her unaware, crushing her with its stormy tide. Sitting at her healer's appointment, she couldn’t process the somber look the ultrasound technician gave them before hurrying out of the room. Ignoring the blooming ache in her stomach, she sat motionless on the cold, impersonal table while her husband’s foot bounced in rapid succession against the linoleum floor. 

_Nothing is wrong, nothing is wrong_ , she repeated to herself. _I’ve done everything right. We’ve done everything perfectly._

But unlike her, Draco understood failure, could identify the beginnings and endings of loss because he’d intimately known it. His bouncing leg and glassy eyes would have told her all she needed to know if she’d just chosen to listen. 

The healer arrived first by sound—sharp, quick footsteps down the hall, followed by a pause in front of the door—then by sight, a deep frown and ghostly pallor. 

At the age of five, Hermione almost drowned during a trip to the beach; she vividly remembered the crashing waves overhead–unrelenting, punishing–holding her prisoner against the harsh sand while forcing briny water down her lungs.

At the age of twenty-seven, when the doctor whispered the first _I’m so sorry_ into the sterile room, she was brought back to the ocean: the words drowned her, seized her breath, crushed her ribs, and punished her with their absolution. 

The words felt unbelievable, and so she chose not to believe them. 

Later, as she cried in Draco’s arms, caught his tears with her hair, she still thought they could somehow fix it. There had to be something, anything, that could make this right again. That night, she dreamed of another heartbeat. 

The following appointments blurred together; debates regarding her care— _potions or surgery? Hospital or home?_ —coalescing into a final decision summarized by a neat stack of discharge instructions and pamphlets. 

On the way out of the hospital, a mediwitch handed her a card. “This is the contact information for a mind healer specializing in care for patients who have recently suffered a miscarriage. You’re not alone.”

Once home, Hermione threw the card away. 

For two weeks, she wept. Sometimes she could make it past her morning tea. Other times, her tears from the night before bled into the following day, disrupting her grip on the passage of time. 

“I should return to work. I need a distraction,” she told Draco one morning, his eyes as bleak as hers felt. 

“If you feel ready.”

“Will I ever?” she’d responded, trying to keep the anxiety out of her voice. But the question lingered: _Would she ever?_

On Hermione’s second day of work, just two weeks after she’d suffered her miscarriage, Lavender announced her pregnancy in the office lunchroom. Hermione went home and screamed into her pillow, raged against silk sheets and smothered logic with angry tears. Lavender, who drank with gusto and regularly ate bar fries smothered with grease, had a future. Lavender, who always claimed not to want children. Who took the elevator instead of the stairs at work, and left midday to smoke cigarettes, still had hope. 

Swept up in the train of her cruel, barbarous thoughts, she didn’t stop to think about why her anger burned so hot. She called out of work the next two days, and learned that becoming enraged over someone’s joy didn’t bring back her own. It only made her feel like a monster. 

From then on, Hermione whispered messages into the universe, asking for forgiveness, wishing and hoping that Lavender could keep her future, could birth her dream. 

The days carried into weeks. Her routine returned; work, cook, clean, sleep, repeat. An overwhelming schedule she could hardly manage, a cycle that fractured her from others. Her friends still went out after work for drinks at the pub and caught shows together on weekends, unaware of everything Hermione had lost. How could she tell them? How could they possibly understand? Even after time had passed—the world not spinning quite so fast anymore—she still felt abandoned. 

“Are you angry with me?” she asked Draco one night. They sat on opposite ends of the couch, an ocean composed of grey cushions. 

“No.” 

Hermione flipped the page of her book, not reading the words. “You think it’s my fault.”

“I never said that.” 

“Well, you haven’t been saying anything recently.”

“Neither have you.” 

That night, he threw her onto their bed and fucked her for the first time since learning of their lost pregnancy: hard, determined thrusts pushing her into the mattress. Afterward, with their skin on fire, sweat fused with their tears, he whispered, _you’re perfect,_ over and over and over, trying to force the words into her skin with his lips. 

But the traitorous, intrusive thoughts had already wormed their way back into her veins. 

_Is there something wrong with me? Am I to blame?_

Unable to rest, Hermione searched for an answer. She found the first two healers useless; they suggested trying again, ( _unlikely_ ), talking with others, ( _inconceivable_ ), and general acceptance of her situation, ( _impossible_ ). By her visit with the third healer, who–only after Hermione’s insistence–finally agreed to conduct another round of blood tests and ultrasounds, concluded that Hermione, in fact, _was_ perfect—medically, at least. 

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” the healer said, displaying a distressing amount of cheeriness towards information Hermione found agitating and unsatisfactory. 

“Then why?” 

She begged for an answer to put the _only ifs_ and _could haves_ to rest. Because if she could point to something medical, some underlying condition, maybe her guilt would shrink, would become insignificant enough to be tucked into a dark corner of her mind, barred from stealing her contentment. Maybe then she could make enough sense of this to feel normal again, to lay blame on anything but herself. Or maybe not. 

The concept of normal remained elusive. During work, she found herself growing increasingly uninterested in meetings, falling behind for the first time in her life. Papers piled up, letters went unanswered; she met tasks with shrugs, and closed her eyes in the face of urgency. She struggled to care.

Throughout the day, her mind wandered, allowing new thoughts to crowd her, leaving little room for much else: _I promise to spend less time here if it means I have the chance to be a good mother_.

And: _If the universe gave me back my hope, I’d never take it for granted again._

Her negotiations failed; her hope remained tethered to her guilt, attached to an anchor and thrown off the stern of a ship, sinking without end. 

Draco rebounded—slight and sluggish, but enough—before she did, and he used strong hands and patient fingers to pull her from the murky depths. 

“Come on. You love the beach,” Draco had said one morning after a particularly hard night. He selected a pair of her leggings out of a drawer and tried to convince her that the fresh air might provide comfort. She lay tucked in bed for the second day in a row, unmoving and despondent. 

“Humor me, Hermione.” Draco tugged the sheet off her body, and slid her pants over her feet, one leg at a time. “If you don’t like it, we can always return home.” 

On that first trip to the beach, they didn’t leave until the moon reflected on the water and the sea air chilled their bones. One trip turned into two, and then three, a weekly outing that offered a place where the waves chipped away her solitude and, piece by piece, washed it out to sea. 

Now, on this neither beautiful nor ugly day, a cool wind lifted her hair, passing over her lips and carrying traces of salt against her skin. A seagull dove into the water, chasing fish. A hermit crab scuttled at the shoreline. A sailboat caught the breeze and grew smaller as it floated toward the horizon. Her mouth quirked upward, the motion still unfamiliar, though not unwelcomed. Draco stared at the movement of her hair and the flit of her lips, and his own smirk grew. His toes finally found hers under the sand.

“Ready to go?” He murmured after a time. 

She nodded, lifting her feet and pushing the heavy layer of earth away with her toes. Draco stood and offered his hand to help lift her up. He brushed remnants of salty air from her curls, and planted a kiss on her forehead. 

Hermione looked down at the sand, at where her makeshift hole remained. Crouching, she used her fingers to smooth out the grains, erasing the evidence of her presence. 

Perhaps next time she’d leave her thoughts behind. Perhaps next time the sand would offer a final resting place for her grief. And perhaps she’d finally accept, allow for rolling tides to break it down along with the rock and glass and coral and bone, creating something new. 

But for now, she couldn't quite part with her grief. The sound of the ocean faded, distant, as she left the beach with Draco at her side. 


End file.
